Well, we are now 25 days away from our departure from Los Angeles. I am beginning to realize how soon things will begin to unravel as this trip approaches. My adventures officially begin on June 3rd as I will be heading up to Michigan for a wedding. On June 6 I will fly from Flint, MI to Harrisburg, PA for a conference. Then on the evening of June 9 Joel and I both fly to LA and meet up with Scott there. We get a day and a half in LA until the evening of June 11 when our flight leaves for Sydney, New South Wales, AUS! Because we are crossing the international dateline we end up losing a day and actually arriving at 6 a.m. on Sunday, the 13th.
Our itinerary will be pretty flexible but we do have some solid dates where we will be catching flights. On June 16 we will fly south to Melbourne. Then on the 19th we fly north to Brisbane for a few days until we catch a flight to Nadi, Fiji, on June 23. We spend 4 full days in Fiji and fly to Auckland, New Zealand on June 28, which was the most recent ticket we purchased. We are hoping to have New Zealand figured out sometime soon...we have people to stay with at various locations and multiple ways to travel, we are simply trying to decide on what we want to spend our money on.
One of the toughest things for us to think through is what travelling around New Zealand will be like in the winter time. Not only is it colder but there is significantly less sunlight per day the further south we go. We know of several Lord of the Rings sights we want to go to, but the question is will those be worth it on the South Island in the middle of winter?
Regardless of how our plans there end up we will most likely be flying from Christchurch back to Sydney on July 8 in the early morning. Our flight leaves Sydney late that night and gets into Brisbane for an overnight delay where we have decided to hit the town. We end up arriving in LA on the 9th, gaining a day coming back this time. And from there Joel is flying to Chicago and Scott and I are staying in LA for a couple more days.
I am looking forward to this trip even more now that I have written all this.
I'll keep you all posted...
-b garrison
